Digging Deeper Days
Finding the original intent of Scripture and making good application to our everyday lives as we become equipped to correctly handle the Word of Truth!
Today is 2-for-1 Friday!
Check out Hope Unseen!
The Questions
Romans 8:24-27
Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? 25 Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience. 26 In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Original Intent
1) What does it mean to be saved “in” hope? (verse 24)
As a baby grows inside its mother’s womb, so are we saved inside of hope. We place our faith in Christ Jesus with the expectant hope that our salvation is indeed coming. What we have taken on faith we will one day behold with our eyes. A new mama discovers a new life is alive within her body, and she believes this life will one day be held outside her body. So it is with faith and hope. By faith, we believe the Lord will be true to His word and rescue our souls from eternal damnation apart from Him. Our salvation is birthed and grown through the coming Hope. With breathtaking perspective, the disciple Peter wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being guarded by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Peter 1:3-5) We do not need to leap with “blind faith” onto a shaky precipice of “hopefully maybe this will pan out”. The Hope we have been birthed into through faith is itself Alive, for Christ, our Savior is Alive! He is the proof of the sure and certain resurrection and eternal life to come for all who trust in Him! When He rose victoriously from His grave, leaving burial rags behind to embrace His disciples, He did so having overcome all things that we also might be able to share in this Living Hope right now and in eternity forward.
2) What is significant about “inexpressible groanings” from the Spirit? (verse 26)
Taken alone, the language of verse 26 seems both mysterious and wonderful. The Spirit of God Himself interceding on our behalf to the Father God that we might be known and understood. An Advocate to translate our pain and suffering. A Translator to give voice to the grief, or even the joy, we simply cannot express with our human tongue. Rightly so, this is an immense gift surely worth reveling in; we have been given an Intercessor by God Himself to comfort us and speak for us! When we step back into the depths of the preceding verses, however, the vast depths of unfathomable love endlessly wash over us, drowning us sweetly in its grace. Creation groans, “…we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains…”. (verse 22) We groan, “…we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption…”. (verse 23) This is the language of unfathomable aching expressing a longing so vastly deep it cannot be conveyed by syllabic representation for it hits to the deepest parts of our soul. Believers have been given the Holy Spirit of God to breathe within them, causing them to hunger and thirst for the fullness of adoption and the welcoming embrace of eternity with Christ where grief and tears and wounds are justly healed. We long for this with groans we cannot express! And displayed here is the wonderful magnificence of the God who loves us beyond all imaginings for “In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness…intercedes for us with inexpressible groans.” (verse 26) Our groanings become His own. As we ache for wholeness and the tangible stuff of redemption and unfettered love lived out in His very Presence, so does our God. In fact, to be more accurate, it is His groanings that are reflected in us since it is first His Spirit within us creating a hungering ache for wholeness in the first place. How beautifully He draws us into unity with His heart!
3) What comforting truth can we trust from verse 27?
Wrapped within the deity of the Triune God working seamlessly together as the perfect 3-in-1 God (Father, Son, and Spirit) to intercede for us, we are met with a deeply comforting unchanging truth, “He (God’s Spirit) intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (verse 27) Even if we should pray with wrong motives based on our selfishness, we are assured God will answer us aright. He will not grant a selfish request that would thwart His plan or bring our destruction. He is infinitely good, and His love endures forever. (Psalm 136) His plan is to shape us into the image of God the Son, Jesus (verse 29), as this is how He designed every human being to perfectly reflect God (Genesis 1:27) With our eternal salvation and life together with Him in mind, God wisely uses the faith of our prayers, even our groanings, to beckon us to know Him deeper, trust His ways, and experience His love for us even while we wait for eternal life with Him in perfected Glory.
Everyday Application
1) What does it mean to be saved “in” hope? (verse 24)
As a mama of a little boy whom I never held, I know this illustration falls short from perfect. As a close friend of mamas who have lost precious children to disease, self-harm, and tragedy, I grieve with you. Loss of any kind is not the Lord’s original design, which points us, again, right back to the beauty of the gospel. Sin was not God’s final purpose for us. He did not, in utter repulsiveness for the choices we have made to sin against Him, decide to leave us in our sin. No! He, seeing our brokenness, feeling our grief, and achingly longing for us to return to Him, created a way for us to be made whole in hope. He sacrificed Himself, paying our debt to sin, which is death (Romans 6:23), and then rose with mighty victory from the dead that death itself might die forever. With this victory in hand, and our debt to sin paid in full (1 John 2:1-2), He offers Hope that cannot be undone (John 10:27) to each of us (1 John 2:2) if we will accept His work by faith and repent of our sin. (Acts 2:38) Consider what it would mean for your everyday life to be reshaped and rebirthed within Living Hope. Maybe you’ve already given your life to Jesus, Sister, we each still desperately need to be reminded we are alive within Hope through Jesus. No pit is so deep, no tragedy so dark that the Hope of Christ refuses to redeem when we offer our surrender. Maybe you’ve always balked at “Christianity”, wondering if God was actually real, assured He couldn’t be anything but angry with you, or maybe you’ve tried playing “Christian” your whole life only to wonder if you really ever surrendered. Don’t let another moment slip away without being rebirthed and alive within Living Hope! Come to the Savior who died to save you, and let His life fill you!
2) What is significant about “inexpressible groanings” from the Spirit? (verse 26)
Paul exquisitely espouses in concluding his poem on God’s divine love and its coming fullness in eternity, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) Now, in our everyday, we groan and ache and wish and dream for wholeness. Our hearts, burdened currently with loss, tragedy, wounds, abandonment, and loneliness, bleed to experience the fullness of Love In Person for eternity in Glory with God. As does our God longingly wait. But one day, one day, we who have trusted Christ now today, will fully know and comprehend the depth and breadth and width of this unfathomable love of the Divine God who sacrificed Himself for us. Truly, “What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived—God has prepared these things for those who love Him. Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10) The Spirit of God, who IS God, knows the fullest depths of God and all He has planned for the rich inheritance, that blessed Unseen Hope, of all believers. (Ephesians 1:11-13) He also fully knows every ache and groan of every human heart. Sisters, this is indeed the “With Us God”, walking alongside, groaning with us, preserving our souls for that grand moment when we will see Him face to face and fully know the depths of His love! These are the anchoring truths of our tumultuous everyday lives!
3) What comforting truth can we trust from verse 27?
God’s love is so unlike our human love, but we often try to compare His love to ours. We become impatiently annoyed with pestering requests, and give in, even if it doesn’t benefit the one who so incessantly asks. Or, jumping to pride or anger, we may decide to withhold all things until they bend to our way or, at minimum, acknowledge our generosity. Not so with God. (Matthew 7:7-11) As a human parent, I’ve experienced both of these extremes with my children. A child will beg and whine and keep on pleading, even adding in twinkly eyes and cherub-like grins until I finally relent and give what I had already decided was not in their best interest. I’ve also been overwhelmed, tired, and angry so I have taken away good things or decided not to give good things because of my own fleshly struggles. The Lord does not act this way toward us. He both listens with grace and responds with love, every single time. Never will He decide to be emotionally rash as we plead and groan. His Spirit knows us in the deepest of deep places, He pairs that knowing of us with the infinite knowing He has of all things, then delivers what is absolutely best for us. In our deepest grief and in our every prayer in every circumstance (Ephesians 6:18), the Spirit will move and act through our faith to bring about the will of God. We cannot mess up His divinity. So pray, Sister. Pray with all the fervency within you. (Romans 12:12) Seek His face. (1 Thessalonians 5:17) Desire to know Him and His love first and foremost, and confidently rest in knowing that He holds your heart with the most tender, all-encompassing love ever experienced.
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Digging Deeper is for Everyone!
1) Take this passage (or any other passage).
2) Read it, and the verses around it,
several times
3) Write down your questions
as you think of them.
4) Ask specific culture related questions and be ready to dig around for your answers. Google them, use www.studylight.org, or look them up in a study Bible and read the footnotes (click on the little letters next to a word and it will show you
other related verses!). (www.esvbible.org)
5) Check your applications with other trusted Christians that you are in community with and embrace the fullness of God
in your everyday!
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Why Dig Deeper?
Finding the original meaning is a huge deal when we study Scripture and can make all the difference in our understanding as we apply God’s truths to our everyday lives.
In our modern-day relationships, we want people to understand our original intention as we communicate; how much more so between God and humanity?!
Here’s a little bit more on why we take Digging Deeper so seriously.
Study Tools
We love getting help while we study and www.studylight.org is one of many excellent resources, providing the original Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament) with an English translation.
Want to know more about a specific word in a verse? Click on “Strong’s Interlinear Bible” then click the word you’d like to study. Discover “origin”, “definition” and hear the original pronunciation – That Is Awesome!
Want more background? Click “Study Tools”, then pick a few commentaries to read their scholarly approach, keeping in mind that just because a commentary says it, doesn’t mean it’s true. (just like the internet :-))
Memorize It!
Download this week’s verse and make it your phone’s lockscreen!
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